麦肯锡-缩小黑人孕产妇健康差距：更健康的生活，更强大的经济（英）

August 2025Closing the Black maternal-health gap: Healthier lives, stronger economiesBlack American women face disproportionately high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity. Better research and care can transform health outcomes and boost the economy by $25 billion.This article is a collaborative effort by Jordan VanLare, Melvin Mezue, Molly Bode, and Pooja Kumar, with Caroline Morgan Berchuck and Fadesola Adetosoye, representing views from the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility and the McKinsey Health Institute.Conventional wisdom holds that women live longer and healthier lives than men—but that’s only partly true. Globally, women may outlive men, but they spend 25 percent more of their lives in poor health.1 For Black women in the United States, the picture is even more troubling. Maternal-mortality rates are two to four times higher for Black women than for White, Hispanic, or Asian women, reaching 50 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023.2 If current trends continue, that rate could nearly double to 94 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2040, placing the United States on par with many low-income countries.Mortality is only part of the story. Black American women are disproportionately affected by a range of potentially debilitating maternal-health conditions, including preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, and postpartum depression. An analysis by the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility (IEM) and McKinsey Health Institute (MHI) finds that these conditions not only pose immediate health risks but also have long-term consequences. In 2025 alone, these conditions could result in the loss of 350,000 healthy life years for Black women giving birth—meaning that disability and chronic illness connected to maternal health may shape a substantial portion of their lives.This health gap extends from mothers to infants. Black infants in the United States are more than twice as likely to die as their White, Hispanic, and Asian peers.3 Contributing factors include complications such as preterm birth and low birth weight, as well as inadequate access to high-quality prenatal care. Closing this gap could save the lives of 35,000 Black infants by 2040—and dramatically improve long-term health outcomes for children.Disparities between pregnant women—related to socioeconomics, age, race, access, or other factors—exist around the world. MHI and IEM focus on the United States in this report for three reasons. First, the United States is an outlier among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries in both maternal and infant mortality. Although more than 90 percent of maternal deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, the United States has one of the highest maternal-mortality rates among high-income nations—marked by persistent racial disparities in maternal, neonatal, and infant outcomes, even after adjusting for income and education.4 Second, robust data sets in the United States indicate how many of the deaths are pre